Sixteen days later, the Eagles‘ offensive coordinator search concluded with a name few would have envisioned at the start.

The team announced the addition of Sean Mannion, a 33-year-old former quarterback who spent last season on the Green Bay Packers’ staff after a career as a backup quarterback for some of the league’s most well-regarded offensive coaches.

Here are five big-picture takeaways about the hire:

A home-run swing

After missing out on the first wave of top coordinator candidates amid a crowded field of openings in the last few weeks, the Eagles cast a wide net that included a handful of coaches who were likely a hiring cycle or two away from being in high demand instead.

Mannion fits squarely into that category. He’s got just two years of coaching experience after starting out on Matt LaFleur’s staff with the Packers as an offensive assistant in 2024 and spending last season as Green Bay’s quarterbacks coach. That limited coaching experience is counterbalanced with a playing career that placed him in offensive meeting rooms with Sean McVay, Matt LaFleur, Kevin Stefanski, Gary Kubiak, Klint Kubiak, Zac Taylor, Dave Canales, and Grant Udinski. For what it’s worth, Mannion said in a news conference captured by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that he spent most of his career as a backup quarterback preparing for a coaching career as well.

However extensive his preparation may have been while working under the likes of McVay and LaFleur, the Eagles offensive coordinator job represents a significant step up for Mannion — one that would have required plenty of projection from the Eagles to answer some of the biggest questions his lack of experience invites. It’s still unclear exactly where he falls on the spectrum of offenses that trace back to McVay’s roots and, even then, how much agency he’ll have to install that offense with Eagles coach Nick Sirianni and quarterback Jalen Hurts’ already-established voices in the room.

In lieu of a home-run hire early in the cycle, the Eagles took a home-run swing with Mannion. They will have a much better sense of Mannion’s vision and command after two interviews, but there’s plenty of variance in appointing such a young, inexperienced coach for a team that will go into next season with legitimate, potentially fleeting Super Bowl aspirations.

Play-calling inexperience

Despite Mannion’s absence of play-calling experience, it will indeed be the first-time coordinator calling the offense next season for the Eagles according to a league source.

It shouldn’t come as a complete surprise. Sirianni has valued being freed up to manage games since ceding play-calling responsibilities to Shane Steichen midway through his first season in charge, a dynamic that will remain going into next season.

First with Brian Johnson in 2023 and Kevin Patullo last season, the Eagles have been burned by first-time play-callers twice in the last three years. Unlike the other two, Mannion will come in to implement a new scheme rather than preserve the scheme from the year before. That will come at the detriment of the continuity Jalen Hurts has often said he strives for during his Eagles tenure, but it will be a necessary overhaul for an offense that reached the nadir of Sirianni’s tenure last season.

A year early

The recent history makes hiring a first-time play-caller a cautionary tale for this team, but missing out on the first wave or two of candidates left the Eagles choosing mostly from either unproven commodities with upside or experienced coaches who have struggled at previous stops.

When the Eagles hired Sirianni, Jeffrey Lurie pointed to “the coach he could become” as a selling point for the hire. Hiring Mannion feels somewhat similar in that the Eagles worked to identify a candidate that may have been a year or two away from becoming a coordinator candidate league-wide. Davis Webb, the Denver Broncos quarterbacks coach who fielded interviews for both head-coaching and offensive-coordinator gigs after a career spent playing for prominent offensive minds, has a similar track record to Mannion’s. Mannion has one fewer year of coaching experience than Webb, but played three more years in the league as a backup.

A question many fans may have when assessing Mannion’s hasty ascension into this role will be whether it means he’ll be less likely to go one-and-done with the Eagles if he’s successful.

My guess? It won’t take too long for Mannion to get recognition if things go well. Just look across the landscape of the NFL after a busy offseason to determine why. Of the offensive coordinators who call plays for their teams, none have held the same position for more than two years (Joe Brady went from OC to head coach this offseason and longtime play-calling coordinators like Todd Monken and Ben Johnson have taken head-coaching jobs elsewhere in the last two seasons).

Simply put: Successful play-calling offensive coordinators don’t stay offensive coordinators for long in today’s NFL. And as long as Nick Sirianni prioritizes managing games detached from calling plays, it’s probably unrealistic to expect the team to go years without losing a young play-caller like Mannion if he turns the Eagles offense around in a meaningful way.

The start of a transition

After Howie Roseman foreshadowed an offseason of transition earlier this month, Mannion represents the first step toward exactly that.

The Eagles’ prioritization of defensive players early in the draft the last few seasons is due to flip on its head this offseason, and Mannion will give them a clearer, significantly different direction for the offensive rebuild to come. Even with Mannion’s exact offensive philosophies murky as a result of his limited coaching resume, the common threads between all of his influences are setting things up with creative motions and placing the play-action passing game firmly at the center of things.

Most of those changes will come down to Hurts’ comfortability operating in a completely different system, but it will still be instructive when evaluating the Eagles offensive additions over the next few months.

Have the Eagles earned the benefit of the doubt re: external hires?

A final word on the Eagles’ spotty history of hiring first-time play-callers …

For as shaky as Patullo and Johnson were in their first year calling an NFL offense, the Eagles’ track record of hiring external candidates under Lurie, both head coaches (Nick Sirianni, Doug Pederson, Chip Kelly, Andy Reid) and offensive coordinators (Kellen Moore, Shane Steichen, Frank Reich, Pat Shurmur) should earn them the benefit of the doubt with Mannion.